Why “I Translated a Portion” Became a First-Person Quote
The Kinderhook Plates argument in the CES Letter depends on one sentence doing an extraordinary amount of work. Without it, the entire claim that Joseph Smith was caught translating a hoax loses its force.
That sentence is presented to readers as if Joseph Smith himself said it:
“I have translated a portion…”
The CES Letter treats this line as decisive evidence. It is framed as a clear admission. A testable claim. A failure.
But the record is clear.
Joseph Smith never said that.
Where the Quote Actually Comes From
The “I translated a portion” line does not originate with Joseph Smith. It originates in a private journal entry written by William Clayton. Clayton was summarizing what he believed he observed. He was not quoting Joseph directly. He did not describe dictation. He did not describe revelation. He did not describe a translation process.
Clayton wrote in the third person. His wording was later incorporated into History of the Church, a multi-volume biography compiled after Joseph Smith’s death using journals, recollections, and editorial reconstruction. As part of that process, third-person summaries were rewritten into a first-person narrative style.
This is not disputed history. It is acknowledged by scholars on all sides.
Yet the CES Letter presents the rewritten first-person sentence as if it carries the same weight as a contemporaneous statement dictated by Joseph Smith himself.
The Editorial Rewrite Changes the Story
Language matters. A third-person summary and a first-person declaration do not function the same way.
When a sentence is rewritten as “I have translated a portion,” it sounds deliberate. It sounds authoritative. It sounds like a completed action owned by the speaker.
But that authority is created by editing, not by Joseph Smith.
The CES Letter relies on the emotional force of the first-person phrasing while simultaneously acknowledging, in more recent revisions, that the wording is editorial. That tension is never resolved. The admission is made, but the conclusion remains unchanged.
If the sentence only sounds decisive because it was rewritten decades later, that should matter.
The GAEL Overlap the CES Letter Still Minimizes
The problem deepens when the content of Clayton’s journal entry is compared with Joseph Smith’s earlier Egyptian study materials, commonly referred to as the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language.
The GAEL contains language describing a royal figure descended from Ham through Pharaoh, receiving authority from heaven. That language appears on the page of the notebook Clayton likely saw. It is preserved today in the Joseph Smith Papers Project (GAEL, page 10).
Clayton’s journal summary of what the Kinderhook Plates “contained” closely mirrors that same language. This is not a vague similarity. It is the same conceptual description, arranged in nearly the same terms.
That overlap matters because it offers a straightforward explanation the CES Letter does not foreground.
Clayton may not have been recording a translation at all. He may have been describing what he saw written in an existing notebook that he did not help create and likely did not fully understand.
That explanation removes the need to invent a lost translation event. It explains why no dictated manuscript exists. It explains why nothing followed. And it explains why later editors needed to rewrite the sentence into first person to make the episode feel decisive.
This analysis is laid out in detail in Letter for My Wife’s Kinderhook Plates article, which the CES Letter references selectively while avoiding its most damaging implications.
Why the Absence of a Translation Record Still Matters
Even after acknowledging the editorial issue, the CES Letter continues to treat the Kinderhook Plates as a failed translation. That position requires ignoring what is missing.
No translation manuscript exists. No dictated text exists. No scribes are named. No continuation follows. Every known translation project Joseph Smith undertook left paper behind.
The Kinderhook episode did not.
If the CES Letter wants to argue that Joseph Smith translated the plates, it must explain why this case alone leaves no translation record. It does not do that.
Revisions That Reveal the Weakness
The CES Letter did not originally acknowledge the first-person quote problem. That concession came later, after historians and scholars repeatedly challenged the claim and pointed out the editorial history behind the quotation.
Those revisions did not occur because new evidence was discovered. They occurred because the original presentation could not withstand scrutiny.
The CES Letter’s author has quietly revised wording and explanations over time in response to these critiques while keeping the same conclusions intact. A record of those changes, and what prompted them, is documented here: Changes to the CES Letter.
That pattern matters. When an argument requires revision to survive criticism but refuses to adjust its conclusions, it raises questions about whether the goal is accuracy or persuasion.
What the CES Letter Still Needs the Reader to Accept
After all acknowledgments and revisions, the CES Letter still needs the reader to believe:
- That Clayton’s summary equals a translation event
- That editorial rewriting does not affect evidentiary weight
- That near word-for-word overlap with the GAEL is incidental
- That silence and missing documents strengthen the case
Those are not minor assumptions. They are load-bearing.
A Simpler Explanation the Sources Allow
The record supports a simpler explanation.
Joseph Smith compared characters. The GAEL notebook was present. Clayton summarized familiar language he encountered there. No translation was dictated. No manuscript was produced. Later editors rewrote the summary into first person. Modern critics then treated that rewritten sentence as if it were a direct admission.
That explanation fits the documents we have without inventing documents we do not.
If the Kinderhook Plates argument collapses once the quote is returned to its original form and context, then the strength of the argument was never in the evidence. It was in the phrasing.